"How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their backyard,” he said. “It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"

"I'm not going to pass judgment on whether armies should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to fight war to every single human being,” he said. "It's got to be regulated... It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it... it's not going to happen."

Schmidt has previously made similar remarks to the British newspaper in January 2013.

"Terrorists and criminals could use drones to carry IEDs [improvised explosive devices]—that could result in conflict between civil and military drones," he said. "Or it could happen over the US-Mexico border. Maybe we'll even see the world's first drone strike against cyber-terrorists. That's how seriously evil part of this [growth in technology] could be.”

His remarks came just days after Idaho’s governor signed a bill into law that now requires a warrant to collect evidence from drones. The bill goes on to impose other related restrictions on drone use by law enforcement.

Promoted Comments

Presumably people will feel much the same same about their neighbour taking photos of their homes from a self-flying plane as they do to Google street view taking photos of their homes from a self-driving car.

What exactly is the difference between someone flying a camera over your property and Google send a camera down your street taking pictures? Either way, they're taking pictures of what's publicly available to see, not going inside your property.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of drones — ANY drones, government or private — buzzing my house and shooting pictures, but it's pretty ironic to have someone from Google say it's a privacy risk. If it's a privacy risk, why isn't what Google does with Street View a privacy risk? I'm not sure they're different.

As an ex-newspaper editor (and reporter/photographer before that), I don't want to end the legality of taking pictures of what's available from public vantage points. I'm just not sure what the legal logic is for banning one type of intrusion from the public right of way and allowing another type.

134 Reader Comments

Never forget that regulations and laws only prohibit law abiding people from doing something with their drones... those who reject the law will do whatever they want regardless of the punishment. So if you are concerned about your neighbor who openly says: "Hey, check out my new drone..." he is much less likely to be the one using it for nefarious purposes.

Regulations can only stop honest people from using drones for good, and it can only punish those who get caught using it for bad. Those who neither use it for good, nor get caught doing evil will enjoy the full benefits of drone use, while the rest of us suffer their violations. Victims of our own flawed logic.

This is a company that monitors all of your communications, your GPS locations, your contacts, your calendar, your home and work addresses (plus other locations you regularly visit), the contents of your private documents, your internet searches and browsing habits, etc, etc, etc.. They know things about you that you wouldn't reveal to your best friend. They know more about you than you know about yourself. And they are worried about your privacy??? For f*cks sake!

Uh, some people don't use android phones. That takes care of location tracking. I don't use G-mail, so that takes care of the contacts. I use duckduckgo as much as possible to avoid google knowing my searches.

Note on all platforms, running google maps means they know your location, so I use Blackberry maps if I don't need satellite imagery.

My front yard is public. My fenced in back yard is private, and anything in that space may be subject to my authority, which includes drones. As long as it stays out of my space, I'm fine with it. But I would hope that my neighbors would use some common sense and respect my space rather than get into some sort of arms race with me.

Exactly. Of course someone intent on persistently watching you is not going to park the drone within your property when they can take photos/video just as well from just outside your property. But realistically...the amount of people that would actually do that, regardless of how easy/inexpensive it is, is always going to small.

That why all this talk about neighbors spying ect is completely blown out of proportion. The vast majority of people out there are going to be decent people with common sense who are just won't use drone tech that way. There will of course always be some highly publicized incidents where it will occur...but I believe they will remain relatively isolated.

Please note I am not talking about govt or law enforcement agencies using drones for surveillance int he above. That is a separate issue (though I am not overly worried about that either).

My front yard is public. My fenced in back yard is private, and anything in that space may be subject to my authority, which includes drones. As long as it stays out of my space, I'm fine with it. But I would hope that my neighbors would use some common sense and respect my space rather than get into some sort of arms race with me.

Exactly. Of course someone intent on persistently watching you is not going to park the drone within your property when they can take photos/video just as well from just outside your property. But realistically...the amount of people that would actually do that, regardless of how easy/inexpensive it is, is always going to small.

That why all this talk about neighbors spying ect is completely blown out of proportion. The vast majority of people out there are going to be decent people with common sense who are just won't use drone tech that way. There will of course always be some highly publicized incidents where it will occur...but I believe they will remain relatively isolated.

Please note I am not talking about govt or law enforcement agencies using drones for surveillance int he above. That is a separate issue (though I am not overly worried about that either).

Maybe we need a closer look at how present civilian surveillance equipment is being use, so we'll have some idea of how "more of" will be used. Remember "cheap enough" changes people's behaviors, just like when "always on" broadband became available, or "CD/DVD" burners and media both changed entire media industries.

I don't see the need for more regulation. We already have law and precedent covering things like that.

Why the downvotes on this one? We do have precedent on this one, since it's fundamentally no different than having a commercial pilot payed to fly near someone's property, or using commercial satellite photography. Not to mention, any "worries" about "privacy" by google, a company that butters its bread with users information, is surely hiding other motives.

The problem is when there is a drone flying over your property line. How do you know who that drone belongs to? It may not belonged to your neighbors. When you are as rich and famous as Eric Schmidt you ought to take this drones seriously. I don't blame him for overly concern.

You have a few hundred acres property. Your house is sitting a whole mile away from the front gate out of the street view. The Google street view will not reach your bedroom windows in that distance but a drone could easily get within a few feet outside of your bedroom windows and snap pictures of you while you were performing your duty on your wife or having a bit fun with your girlfriends.

This could be the police they are building a case file on you. And wait for the day when you have crossed the line between legal and illegal they will use these photo to humiliate you publicly. It also could be the free-lens making his round. A few dollar more for those photos won't hurt him. Either way, it's not good.

The problem is when there is a drone flying over your property line. How do you know who that drone belongs to? It may not belonged to your neighbors. When you are as rich and famous as Eric Schmidt you ought to take this drones seriously. I don't blame him for overly concern.

You have a few hundred acres property. Your house is sitting a whole mile away from the front gate out of the street view. The Google street view will not reach your bedroom windows in that distance but a drone could easily get within a few feet outside of your bedroom windows and snap pictures of you while you were performing your duty on your wife or having a bit fun with your girlfriends.

This could be the police they are building a case file on you. And wait for the day when you have crossed the line between legal and illegal they will use these photo to humiliate you publicly. It also could be the free-lens making his round. A few dollar more for those photos won't hurt him. Either way, it's not good.

Firstly, drones are not terribly stealthy.

Secondly, even assuming they WERE, it is utterly irrelevant. They can't fly a drone out to your window to take pictures of the inside of your house for the same reason that they can't walk up to your window and take pictures of the inside of your house.

Drones can be used freely for aerial photography at sufficient altitude but going and buzzing your neighbor's skylights and windows with your drone is as illegal as driving an RC car over onto their property or going over there and looking in yourself - low altitudes are generally considered to be part of the property of the property owner., whereas higher altitudes (well above your house) are not. What the exact limit largely depends on how much air space you actually use, though in no case is it going to extend more than 500 feet away from your house, and likely even less than that for practical purposes of trespassing.

This is an example of a false concern - the behavior in question is ALREADY illegal, and drones make no difference. "But it is easier!" Really? Its easier to fly a noisy drone over to your window than it is to walk over to it? I would tend to say that the latter is far stealthier.

The police can't enter the curtilage of your house legally, so they cannot do it either. They could photograph you in an open field... but so could anyone else, really.

Moreover, you have to recognize reality - the police have better things to do with their time than this. They really don't have the time to do this. The idea of continuous permanent surveillance is only achievable via fixed cameras for energy reasons - having drones follow everyone around is simply economically infeasible.

Being a peeping tom is illegal as well; so is blackmail. Whining about drones is stupid when people can already do this, but largely don't for exactly these reasons - if the person reports you you can go to jail.

It depends on the divisions of the units. There are Patrol, Undercover, Rape Detail. Robbery Detail, Homicide, Internal Affair, Surveillance and Taxi Detail. Just to name a few.

The regular police officers, Police Reserve. Police volunteers. What else I have missed? Collecting data is what the Surveillance Detail are doing, just collecting data and mostly police harassment were from these guys and girls, old and young, contracted and regular hired. They are good at it.

As far I understand, black and white patrol officers don't do surveillance. Well sometimes these patrol officers assigned to Surveillance Detail as a plain clothes undercover officer. So your saying, "the police have better things to do with their time than this." it really depends on what their job assignments are.

The police can enter any houses at any time, day and night, openly and secretly. They can get away with it when caught red handed.

When you give them a gun, they use it. When you give them a drone, they fly it.

The police reserve surveillance units in fact are the most nasty units among all police divisions.

It depends on the divisions of the units. There are Patrol, Undercover, Rape Detail. Robbery Detail, Homicide, Internal Affair, Surveillance and Taxi Detail. Just to name a few.

The regular police officers, Police Reserve. Police volunteers. What else I have missed? Collecting data is what the Surveillance Detail are doing, just collecting data and mostly police harassment were from these guys and girls, old and young, contracted and regular hired. They are good at it.

As far I understand, black and white patrol officers don't do surveillance. Well sometimes these patrol officers assigned to Surveillance Detail as a plain clothes undercover officer. So your saying, "the police have better things to do with their time than this." it really depends on what their job assignments are.

The police can enter any houses at any time, day and night, openly and secretly. They can get away with it when caught red handed.

When you give them a gun, they use it. When you give them a drone, they fly it.

The police reserve surveillance units in fact are the most nasty units among all police divisions.

WoW! an encore presentation of a post from a completely different article, almost word for word. Didn't make any sense then and still doesn't now, plus it still shows the same level of misunderstanding when it comes to police.

Comments here have focused on Google's past with respect to privacy and appear to be saying that if Google can photograph with Street View, then it's okay for anyone else to photograph from a drone.

That argument has some issues.

First, many people leaving comments here have expressed dissatisfaction with Google performing the filming for Street View in the first place. However, Google was not prohibited from doing so by law, because the law did not anticipate the capabilities of new technology. By the time there was a backlash, the damage had already been done. A precedent was set, and countries around the world allowed Google to continue.

Now, the technology is becoming cheap enough for a company like Google to use drones to film everything from 25 feet or 100 feet in the air - in HD. Our laws didn't anticipate that capability. Think about it. Most people who have bedrooms visible by neighbors or from the street will draw their blinds for privacy. But what about people on higher floors? They may be surprised to see naked HD photos of themselves or their children posted on the Internet by some next-generation mapping technology.

So, let's say that Google (or Microsoft ...) is pressured to blur faces of people in these photos or to blur windows or something. Problem solved?

Not really ...

The trouble is that drones flying in the air are anonymous, and if a market becomes available for them to be mass produced, they will become cheap enough for everyone to own some.

So, what happens when millions of people own these anonymous little flying HD video cameras? How quickly will embarrassing photos be anonymously posted on the Internet?

Of course, the paparazzi will have their fun with politicians and celebrities, but as the costs drop, so will private investigators and teenage boys.

But privacy is not the only issue.

Terrorists will have a field day. Schmidt said "Terrorists and criminals could use drones to carry IEDs [improved explosive devices] – that could result in conflict between civil and military drones." and "I would prefer to not spread and democratise the ability to fight war to every single human being."

With millions of anonymous little drones flying around, no one will be able to distinguish the "good" drones that are just gathering data for fun and profit from the drones operated by criminals and terrorists.